“That’s so.  It comes out, soon as you talk . . .  Well, see here now, we’ll start right away.  That’s how Art hits me—­once I take hold of a notion, I must sling in and get going.  It’s my temperament; and what’s Art—­right there, please—­what’s Art, after all, but expressed temperament?  You catch the idea?  You’re the Infant Shakespeare, the youth to fortune and to fame unknown—­”

    ’His listless length at noontide would he stretch’—­

“Stretch what you have of it—­”

    ‘And pore upon the brook that babbles by.’

“But I don’t want you to paint me,” rebelled the boy.

“Goodness!  Why not?”

For a moment or two Arthur Miles faced the question almost sullenly.

“I don’t want my likeness taken,” he explained at length.

“My young friend,” the artist cheerfully assured him, “if that’s your trouble, dismiss it.  I can’t paint a likeness for nuts.”

“You are sure?”

“Well, I should say I have a grounded expectation, seeing that I claim a bigger circle of friends than any other fellow that ever studied with Carolus; and apart from their liking for me, their conviction that never under any circumstances could I catch a likeness is about the only thing they have in common.  I don’t say it’s the cement of their friendship; but, anyway, it’s an added tie.”

“If Tilda doesn’t mind—­”

The boy hesitated, with a glance over his shoulder.

“We’ll consult the lady when the portrait’s finished.  If she recognises you, I’ll destroy the canvas; and I can’t say fairer than that . . .  No, I shan’t regret it.  We’ll call it an offering to the gods . . .  And now,” pursued the young man, flinging in a charcoal outline in fiery haste, “we’ll consider the brakes open.”

It took him perhaps thirty seconds to block in the figure, and at once he fell to mixing his palette, his fingers moving with a nervous, delicate haste.  He held a brush between his teeth during the operation; but no sooner was it over, and the gag removed, than his speech began to gush in quick, impetuous jerks, each jerk marking an interval as, after flinging a fresh splash of paint upon the canvas, he stepped back half a pace to eye its effect.

“That’s my theory—­what’s Art but temperament? expressed temperament?  Now I’m a fellow that could never stick long to a thing—­never in my life.  I’ve not told you that I’m American, by the way.  My name’s Jessup—­George Pulteney Jessup, of Boise City, Idaho.  My father—­he’s about the most prominent citizen in the State of Idaho.  You don’t get any ways far west of the Rockies before you bump against Nahum P. Jessup—­and you’ll be apt to hurt yourself by bumping too hard. . . .  My father began by setting it down to fickleness.  He said it came of having too much money to play with.  Mind you, he didn’t complain.  He sent for me into his office, and ‘George,’ he said, ’there’s